2yo fighting naps and bedtime...

jeng507

Hi Ladies, I haven't really been on this site in a while but I'm about to have a breakdown. My 2yo has been fighting naps and bedtime for about a week now. She was always a great sleeper....bedtime was a dream (and naps too). We would take her in her room, kiss her goodnight and put her in her crib and she would go right to sleep. The past week, she started fighting bedtime, like kicking and screaming. No real reason, and kinda out of the blue. We do the same routine, bath time, book, walk in her room to give kisses....but lately she has been fighting us. We think its a control issue, so we have been telling her about 30mins before to prepare her, and try to give her choices whenever possible to make her feel like its her decision. That seemed to help a little. Its almost like she doesn't want to go until SHE is ready. But then once she is ready, she will walk in her room herself and willfully go down like normal. But its just a matter of when SHE is ready....sometimes its only a couple mins, other nights its taken us 30-60 to get her to go down nicely. 

Her naps are just a nightmare now. She absolutely refuses. We do the same thing as bedtime, and give her warning about 30mins before, but that doesn't seem to help at all. She kicks and screams and is almost acting like its a punishment. The past 2 days, we have let her cry bc I honestly don't know what else to do. I let her cry for 5-10mins and then go in to console her, but that just seems to upset her more when I leave the room again. I know she still needs the naps bc once she does finally go to sleep, she is out for 2+ hrs. I hate to see her fight and cry like this and I just don't get what changed in the past week. Anyone have any advice or tips on what we can do differently?

jeng507

Well tonight went way better than previous nights. We turned the tv off before dinner instead of letting her watch Mickey after her bath. We just read books and quietly played for about an hour before we turned down all the lights in the house and cuddled on the couch. She seemed to play into it! And then went right down like she used to! Ugh I'm so relieved. Hoping this will work every night! Now I just need to figure out her naps! Lol

JNerd

I'm wondering if the timing could be off? Maybe she is past her sleep window, or hasn't bit it yet?

At 2ish they should be napping 7hrs after they way in the morning and going to bed 5hours after they wake from nap.

shella923

The tv thing/ phone thing def messes with my sleep. I bet that was it. DD screams for a nap but after ten min of crying she's out.

MrsT0514

I'm also starting to wonder if the sleep glitch is a thing kids go through around age 2. My DS is 23mo and although we just transitioned to a big bed a couple weeks ago, he started out awesome (he's a great sleeper normally) and now all of a sudden is fighting naps and/or bedtime the past few days. It seems to be very cyclical and will only happen for a week or 2 every few months or so, so I wonder if it correlates with growth spurts/developmental leaps.

Either way..its exhausting as shit!